Steve Kragthorpe

I was cleaning up the mess from last week and came across this interview with Kragthorpe in Nov,2003 about his first QB at Tulsa, James Kilian – a mobile QB that Kragthorpe structured his offense around.

In modern football, with the speed and athleticism of the defenses out there today you have to have a guy who can make some plays with his feet and James can do that as evidenced with the runs he made the other night. What it does for us offensively is that it allows taking advantage of his abilities and making people defend the quarterback. If the guy is just a pure pocket passer without the threat of running the football whether it is a little speed option, whether it is a zone read play, whether it’s a quarterback draw, or whether it’s throwing the ball back to the quarterback like we have done on a couple of occasions, then you have become a little bit easier to defend. So, I think that James and his abilities make it tougher on defenses in terms of preparation for our entire offense and then you know.

Before that he was a BYU boy (his dad a coach on the staff), but was thrown into the Texas A&M option offense, which the head coach wanted him to change to the “west coast” style byu offense. Then after Tulsa he inherited the complicated (both scheme wise and off the field issues) Petrino Louisville team. Then back to A&M under west coast Sherman, who had to give in to doing some power spread due to injuries and ineffective passing from the QB.

Now he’s basically went backwards with Old School College/Pro set Les Miles. Miles was actually a good OC himself – BUT THAT WAS IN THE 90s!! He wont progress. But Krags just does what the boss tells him – no really unique stye. But there’s no doubt that Tulsa was by far his best Offense – power spread!

I just cant help but wonder – if he had been paired with the next OC at Tulsa – Gus Malzahn. Brilliant QB mind with a brilliant Spread mind and Herb Hand as Oline coach bringing ideas from Rich Rodriguez’s PS at West Virginia. I venture to say that as great as the Malzahn Tulsa offenses were, they may have been better! Even if Meyer hired him as a QBs coach for OSU – I would love that. He has parkinson’s , but he is still a big part of LSU’s offense. He would help out young Tom Herman, an up and coming talent himself, but who has the job of QB coach along with OC. Of course, I have full faith in what Meyer’s doing at OSU and his moves so far have been practically perfect, imo.

Kragthorpe is a great qb coach – a good play caller and game planner – he has proven all of this everywhere he’s been. Even at Louisville, Brian Brohm had a HUGE senior season in Krag’s first year. This was the one place where Kragthorpe’s incredible flexibility got in the way as he tried to mesh his his less complicated BYU system with a very complicated NFL style Petrino passing game. In this one case a little bit of hard headedness may have paid off – trash the Petrino system after Brohm graduated and start new. But it was much more complicated than that. And with all the off the field issues there really was no hope.

Maybe if he can keep the Parkinson’s at bay we will yet see some more surprises by this coach who shocked the world at Tulsa a decade ago. But it wont be with Mile’s old school schemes. It will be with one of the multitude of brilliant coaches out there today experimenting with the POWER SPREAD!